Destroyers by Dave Mckay (latest novels to read TXT) 📕

"They ain't orphans," Amy whispered angrily, hoping that Rosy would not understand if she used English. "They're your family; you take them." All of the kids staying with her had lost both parents to AIDS, and none of them had any other living relatives. She had refused to help literally hundreds of other orphans in the area because they did not match those criteria. Locals knew her rules, and most respected it; but George did not let that deter him.

"We'll not take them," he said. "They're cursed, Madam. A bad spirit will come on us if we help them."

"Don't be stupid," said Amy. "A bad spirit will come on you if you don't help them. They're your kin."

Her words had little effect. When George returned to the markets he left Rosy on the road in front of Amy's house, with a strong warning for her not to follow him.

"C'mon in, girl," Amy said to Rosy when George was gone. Rosy was 11, two and a half years younger than Moses, who had turned fourteen just before Christmas. Both children were big for their age.

Rosy was not talking. But she laughed.. a strangely happy laugh. She used it (and a word or two here and there) to respond to Amy's questions. For all Amy knew, this was how she always communicated.

Amy was able to get information out of Rosy just by asking the right questions and by watching how she laughed in response. Through this, she learned that Rosy was afraid to return to the butcher shop; and through her own children she learned that the family had a small shamba nearby, with a mud hut on it. Their father had only been renting the butcher shop, and so it would no longer be available to the children now that he was in jail.

Rosy stayed at Amy's overnight, and the next day, Sunday, Amy took her out to the shamba, along with Lucy and the twins. Lucy was seven, and Jane and Gene were nine. The land was in the process of being prepared for planting, and the hut looked like it had been used from time to time.

"Do you sleep here?" Amy asked.

Rosy laughed in a way that expressed embarrassment, and she shook her head vigorously.

"Did Moses stay here?"

Same reaction.

"So who stayed here?"

She raised her eyebrows, laughed again, then screwed her face up in disgust. "Bad lady," was all she said.

Whoever it was, Rosy obviously did not approve.

From the hut Rosy picked up a jembe, a short handled heavy hoe, and she proceeded to drop it forcefully into thick grass that had grown around the edges of the tiny block, and then to lever the grass out before turning each piece of sod upside-down to die. Soon she had enticed Gene into using the hoe, while she checked on a few other things. As Amy looked on, he got the feeling that it had been Rosy's job to farm the tiny plot.

Amy also worked out from a few gestures and words thata larger,neighbouring block belonged to the children's uncharitable uncle, George Chikati.

Kenyan parents divide their land up between their sons. With each new generation, the plots become smaller. Some sons sell out to their brothers, then move to cities like Nairobi and Mombasa; but for those who stay, just surviving on what they can grow on an acre, then half an acre, and then a quarter of an acre becomes more and more impossible with each new generation. No doubt the uncle wanted to see the children disposed of, so that he could claim back his brother's share of the family plot.

On Monday, when most of the children were off at school, Amy decided to leave Benjie in charge and take another trip to the hospital in Kakamega to check on Moses. Rosy came with her.

When they were in the hallway, before entering Moses' ward, Amy detected a hurried movement in the boy's bed about the same time that the nurse cleared them to enter the room.

Moses had a big grin on his face. Rosy ran over to him and leaned her head on his left shoulder, both to comfort him and to comfort herself at the same time.

"Me, I got a surprise, Madam," Moses said, looking over Rosy's head at Amy. "Watch this, Rosy," he added, and then, with a flourish, he pulled his right arm out from under the sheet.

Amy was shocked to see that the boy's arm had been cut off, below the elbow. Moses was displaying a heavily bandaged stump. And he was treating it like a joke! His resilience was amazing; but Amy was furious.

"Wait here," was all she could say as she turned to race back out of the room.

"What have they done to him? What have they done?" she whispered to the duty nurse in something close to a shout. "They didn't need to do that."

"Madam, you need to talk to the doctor about that. We don't have specialists here for putting pins and wires in; so he just took. That was better for him."

"Easier maybe, but not better," Amy said in disgust, as she turned to walk back into the room. The boy's life could be ruined just because of their indifference!

Moses was busy talking to Rosy, who was still only responding with laughs and giggles. It was hard to believe they had just lost both of their parents and one arm.

"You must not go with her. We will lose the land," Moses was explaining in Luhya.

"Sawa," Rosy managed to say in response, before adding her signature giggle, to show support for her brother's logic.

"Thank you, Madam, for helping me," Moses said to Amy in English, when he saw her approaching the bed. "Me, I think I woulda been gone they said that if you did not assist, I would be over the mountain and gone."

Amy was witnessing what she would come to see as trademarks of the young boy. One was his command of language. He could have easily spoken to her in Luhya, but he enjoyed using English, and he would often use it in the strangest ways.. not because he lacked vocabulary, but rather because he had more vocabulary than he knew what to do with.

The other trademark was his spontaneous good nature... an ability to stay positive in the face of any adversity. These were qualities that were destined to take him to the top of the world.

Table of contents

Chapter 3. A Loan

"Madam, we got a trouble again. Please, can you give some help?" It was early Friday morning and Moses was back at Amy's door with Rosy at his side. He had been out of hospital two days, and, with his sister, had moved into the mud hut on their land, 400 metres down the road from where Amy lived. Their mother's body had been buried on her family's property the day before, because Fred had never paid a dowry. It made matters worse for the children, who were now more or less illegitmate.

"Show her, Rosy," he said, and Rosy turned to the side while lifting her blouse to show two round burn marks on her lower back. Amy bent down to get a closer look, and reached out to gingerly touch one of the burns. Rosy drew back in pain, but still managed a laugh.

"How did this happen?" Amy asked, although she knew without asking.

"He wants the land, madam, pure and easy. He put cigarettes on her back. Even he will do it again if we sleep there. Last night we laid in a shamba down the road. But we need the land, Madam!"

Rosy lowered her blouse and looked up at Amy with eyes that spoke sadness, but a mouth that still smiled.

"One second and I'll come with you," Amy said. Her children had just sat down to breakfast in the crowded living room, and so Benjie was put in charge.

On the walk out to the property, Amy asked Moses how his arm was.

"It hurts where it isn't," he said in English. "Me, I can't comfort it now... because it's not there."

Rosy skipped ahead and turned to take a swing at Moses' phantom right hand. He instinctively pulled back and she laughed.

"You know English too!" Amy remarked. She had assumed that Rosy's shyness meant she was not as smart as Moses.

To reach Moses' land, the trio needed to walk down a narrowpaththatpassedthroughhisuncle'sland. George saw them coming and was waiting.

"They are not wanted here," he said to Amy. "Theywill bring trouble to my family. The curse is on them."

"And the D.O. will be on to you," said Amy. She hated to use her friendship with the District Officer as a threat, because she knew that anyone with more wealth than herself might be able to make a similar threat to her if they chose to.

"I have other friends," warned George; but Amy knew he did not have any powerful enough to sway the D.O.

"And I have the burns that you gave to Rosy," Amy warned. "If you lay one more finger on her, I'll have you taken in and dealt with. True!"

Being "dealt with" was a guaranteed twenty lashes from a whip, standard interrogation in those parts; but it could also mean languishing in a cell for months, or even years, just waiting to be heard in court. Amy wasn't sure if she would follow through on such a threat, but George knew there would be no mercy for him if she did.

"It isn't enough land to feed them. They cannot come to me if they get hungry," he warned, which was his way of conceding defeat.

"We won't do that, Uncle," Moses promised, before pushing past him with a flourish from his good left arm, and leading the two females onto the land that was now rightfully his.

"It's true, you know," Amy reminded Moses, when they were out of earshot of George. "You won't be able to feed yourselves with what you can grow here. Have you thought about that?"

"Madam, I been designing on that already. I reckon if I had a boda-boda, we could manage fine."

"But how would you drive with only one arm?" Amy asked, feelingawkward about mentioning something that Moses himself seemed oblivious to. There was no answer, and so she assumed she had made him aware of something that he had not previously considered.

After an awkward silence, conversation moved to other things, and there was no further mention of the boy's plans. Moses wanted to show Amy that he could still swing the jembe fine with just his left arm, and he took a few swings; but Amy cautioned him about exerting too much with either arm before the stitches had been removed from the stump. She forced herself not to get too involved, however. She had her own family to worry about, and in the end, Moses and Rosy Chikati would need to sort out their problems by themselves. Such was life in rural Kenya.

A few Saturdays later, Amy received another knock on her door. This time it was Rosy, and she was jumping up and down with excitement.

"Come! See!" she shouted, laughing almost hysterically to make it clear that she was bringing good news.

Amy rushed to the door and saw Moses barrelling up the dirt road from the markets with a trail of dust behind him, and a passenger on the back of a boda-boda. He pulled up in front of Amy's house, let his passenger off and then handed the bike over to that same passenger.

"Jidraph borrows me his bike when he's having a rest. I been getting lots of practice." he said, only slightly out of breath from his exhibition ride. "Me, I just need a ten-speed, like Jiddy, and I can ride fine. Starting is the hardest, but the gears, they just help." Jiddy smiled at the compliment, before heading back toward the village.

A bike of any sort was too much for Moses to afford, and a ten-speed was considered a luxury even amongst the other boda-boda drivers. Jiddy was the only one in Shinyalu with one.

"Where are you going to get money for something like that?" Amy asked, knowing that he had been hoping she would help him